Everybody knows that nobody 'likes' HR... and it's not all HR's fault. Tyson and Alexa connect with Chief Marketing Officer, Matt Duffy, to debate rebranding the profession, and to discuss what makes good branding, what makes bad branding, and where HR just... steps in it. Tune in this week as the discussion gets a little heated over what makes and breaks a brand, how HR can get more people to pay attention, why HR should be the marketing teams' best friends and the ins and outs of building a brand that people will 'bleed' for.
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Alexa
How's your energy today?
Tyson
Oh, I'm good. I you know, it's just.
Alexa
I feel like I'm getting you in business mode.
Tyson
Yeah, I definitely am. You definitely.
Alexa
I look at you like a little. You look a little in it right now.
Tyson
Yeah, I know. Toggling sometime is sometimes is interesting. I actually had someone recently asked me like, yeah, what's it like? Like working and podcasting and being a new mom. And I was like, no, it's fucking hard. So that's it. I'm not going to sugarcoat that.
Alexa
I would like to think that the podcast thing is the easiest of those three things, like being a real adult animal, probably. Yes.
Tyson
Yes. It adds a certain lightness that I think is very important to my mental. All right.
Alexa
That makes me feel special. We get to add some levity to your life. Very cool. So anything new? Rosie's doing well. Life is good.
Tyson
Yeah, everything is good.
Alexa
Cool, cool. I'm just still hiding out in Mexico. So I got I got no major updates, however relevant to our conversations. Today. We do have a sexy new brand. I'm very excited about our new book. We've come a long way, baby, as they say. I think that's a Moby song or something terrible. It's a bad reference. That was a bad reference.
Alexa
Our guest today is Matt Duffy. He is the chief marketing officer at Pixar Ability and a long time friend of mine. Full disclosure, Matt and I have worked together before. There's not a human in the marketing world. I respect more or enjoy working with more. So I'm I'm flattered that Matt agreed to join us today to talk a little bit about H.R. and the brand of H.R. and employer branding.
Alexa
So welcome to the podcast, Matt or Duffy, as I may to.
Matt
Thank you, Alexa. I'm very happy to be here and glad that you haven't met enough marketers to still think that I'm at the top of your list.
Alexa
Yeah, it's my world this small.
Matt
I keep it's.
Alexa
Not a low bar.
Matt
Matt. It's the hand that room in Mexico. And I'll.
Tyson
Drive through the window.
Matt
Right where I.
Alexa
Am, my windowless room in Mexico. If you really want to do some soul searching, live in a windowless apartment for a month in Mexico, it's. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's a trip. Yeah, I'm really, really exploring all sides of myself right now.
Matt
It's like that Brie Larson movie, The Room, right? You're just, like, down there.
Alexa
You yeah, that's it. That's my life right now. Everyone's like, Oh, you're at the beach. You must be so glamorous. I'm like, You should see that fucking piece of shit. I believe in the downsides of remote life. There are so.
Matt
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alexa
Now, what is that?
Matt
Am I allowed to ask what that is behind you? Is that a yes?
Alexa
So it's not a bed. I get asked about a lot. It is actually a partition that has been constructed for those of you that are listening out of wood beams. So it's kind of like the bed is actually behind it. It's it's kind of like a pretend scream wall. It's a pretend wall. Exactly. But I get asked about it on every call.
Alexa
I just sort of thought it does. It looks, it looks like someone made a for it out of like twine and logs. But no, it actually adds a little charm to the place. So I'm not mad about it, but it is very random. It's unclear why it was necessary other than to make it harder to get to the bathroom.
Alexa
Yeah. And you just moved. Matt, congratulations on a new house.
Matt
So I did just move and I apologize to anyone listening. If you hear lots of noises in the background, I also couldn't find my headphones today, which Alexa is going.
Alexa
To.
Matt
Forever beat me up about but yes, I just moved.
Alexa
I've given up on guest audio. I just our team best. I've given up so well.
Matt
It's really bad because I do I do these things. I don't do a podcast. I'm not at that level yet, but I do interviews with people all the time, and I make sure they have the right audio, the right headphones. We tested everything and now I'm totally being a rookie, so I apologize.
Alexa
All right. We try and then we have guests like you where we just say, Fuck it, here we are. Yeah, we're going to put it out anyway. So yeah, yeah. Shout out to the editing team. That's all I have to say. So, all right. So so we've worked together. We've we've been through lots of shit. But one of the things I know that you are very, very let's say, stingy about Matt that I adore about you is that you are the guy that is like, our brand can't suck.
Alexa
But before we go into that, before we talk about your brand snobbery and how that applies to the wild and wonderful world of art, I want to hear unabashedly sort of your experience with H.R. in your career and before we do that, let's just give the people a little bit of background on who you are and what you do.
Alexa
And then I want to hear I want to hear all the shit.
Matt
Sure, sure. So, you know, I have worked in marketing most of my life. I started out as a market research guy and then a sales guy. And I was always the one that said our marketing team sucks our brand sucks. And finally, we had a CEO at a company I worked for that said, All right, smart guy, why don't you try to do marketing?
Matt
We had a director of marketing at the time. We didn't have a senior marketing person. We had a director of marketing, and he said and his name is Bob Carrigan, and he's actually the CEO of Audible now. He's a guy that is a bad ass. He always was a bad ass. But this this move with me was he said probably not an H.R. approved move, by the way, but he said, we already have a director of marketing.
Matt
We're going to make you also a director of marketing at the end of this six months. I'm going to keep one of you. The other one of you is going to be gone. So that was my first okay. That was my first foray into marketing. And in it made me learn on the on the job and also learn not to criticize other departments again.
Matt
By the way. So as I said, yeah, so as we talk about H.R. and my feelings about H.R., I have to be careful that someone doesn't come along and say, well, why don't you try this because I'm sure I would do worse than anyone. So, yeah, so I've been in marketing forever since then. I've had senior roles at mostly smaller companies, the one that I worked with with you, obviously Alexa was a very small company.
Matt
The company I work for now is called Pixability. We're a YouTube advertising software company. It's a great place to be with YouTube growing and connected, TV streaming growing. But yeah, I like to work at smallish companies, so most my experience with H.R. folks has been smaller teams without a lot of resources trying to figure out how they should be working with marketing or not.
Matt
You know, all that good stuff, right?
Alexa
Okay. So when just so that people understand, when you're when you're doing something like marketing for a group like Pixability, you're focused on both the foundation that is the brand and then also all the way up to lead gen. So like you've got to get your sales team leads and the efforts that go into that. So there's kind of a bit of a pyramid there for those of you that are not in marketing all day, but Matt, one of the things that I know you're very stingy about is this idea of branding.
Alexa
So before we go into branding, I just want to get your thoughts on the brand of our full stop like if you were to describe where the brand of H.R. is right now, in your eyes, what would you say?
Matt
I think it's unfortunately still not thought of as a cool career, right? Like it's not like people aren't like suites. You're in H.R. That's awesome. Like and I think that's unfortunate because I think I think there are lots of extremely cool roles in H.R. and there are some amazing H.R. people and etc., etc. But yeah, I would say my one my survey of one thing is like if if someone was like, hey, I, you know, I'm a racecar driver now, but I think I'm going to get into H.R. that would be weird.
Matt
You'd be like, Really? That's what you're choosing to do? So, yeah, the branding is probably, you know, could be improved.
Alexa
Yeah. Any reasons why you think that is in your experience?
Matt
I mean, I just think there's so much baggage with it that comes with trying to deal with stuff. Sometimes H.R. gets blamed for lack of pay or lack of good culture or a lot of things that they they can help but can't always solve. That sometimes come from, you know, the executive of the other executives and so forth.
Matt
I think it's that mishmash of things that that, you know, if I'm not getting paid well, if my health care is too high, all these things that really an H.R. person has only so much control over, I blame them. And then like I said, it's all the sort of conflict issues within a company. If the H.R. person isn't helping solve those which are really hard issues, they sort of get blamed with that, too.
Matt
And it's I don't know that maybe there needs to be a new name for I mean, there probably are you guys probably know and you're talking about this every all the time on the podcast, but they're maybe Human Resources is a dated as a day to name.
Alexa
Tyson. Did you.
Tyson
Hear that? Well, like I think like you kind of like how I would elaborate on that is that H.R. deals with the things that people care most deeply about.
Alexa
So and nobody wants to deal with.
Matt
Yeah.
Tyson
Yeah, but but it's how an individual gets paid, how your benefits are determined, how your promotion, your career, all these things that you care deeply about versus like, the finance team. Like if someone's saying about the finance team, they're like, Yeah, obviously I want to work for a company that's making money. But what really matters to me is not how much money the company is making other than like, obviously we want it to continue to be successful, but how much at the end of the day, I take home that's what matters to me.
Tyson
And H.R. is sort of this umbrella department, so to speak, or this a group that deals with everything that matters very very, very deeply to individuals. And it's very it's a difficult space to operate in when nobody's ever happy with how much they're getting paid. Nobody's ever happy with how much benefits they're giving. Nobody like people just are never fucking happy about anything, right?
Tyson
They always want more. And to be an H.R. department, that's balancing everybody's need for unique treatment and special bespoke treatment to them, but also keeping a company running. You know, we can't just pay everybody like as an hour, you know, practitioner. I would love to give everybody a raise, but that's just not feasible because we still need to make sure the business is running.
Tyson
And at the end of the day, H.R. is hired by a company to support the company. We're not people's personal support workers. That's another huge misconception is that people think that I'm hired to help you with all your day to day problems. That's not it. And with that, I think it just creates a lot of negativity in the space of H.R. that, like, we are forever going to be fighting against.
Tyson
And because we can't make everybody happy and everybody's always going to blame H.R., despite the fact that is not making any of these decisions, we're simply just executing and making sure that decisions are executed in a way that is actually the most beneficial to people that we possibly we can we do the how not the what. Yeah. So I think with that and yes, there's a lot of like issues with like using H.R. human resources.
Tyson
The problem is I just haven't heard a title that I like any better. I hate using culture titles. I think that's complete bullshit. It's not our job to be responsible for the culture.
Alexa
Yes. Matt has been the captain of every culture committee I think he's ever he's ever.
Tyson
And that's.
Alexa
His company.
Tyson
No, I think it's.
Alexa
Amazing for Matt because it speaks to who he is. But if you have a culture committee, your shit is done.
Tyson
No, it's amazing that you as a non H.R. person, as a CMO, is involved in that. It's not up to the part. It's about everybody that H.R. might be involved. But everybody needs to be involved in the culture it's not just something that is like leading and running. Like we can't just be.
Alexa
A scapegoat when it sucks.
Tyson
Exactly. And that's that's the other issue. So anyways, I I'm still pro H.R., I haven't heard a title I like any better. I am pro taking back. H.R. wants to reclaim H.R.. I want to reclaim H.R. like I am. I I want.
Alexa
To blow the whole thing up and start over Good luck.
Tyson
With that.
Alexa
This is what I'm to blow it up. She's she has to take it back. It's okay.
Matt
So what what are some of the other ones that that are used? I know there's like, I'm VP of people all right.
Alexa
People is probably the the the the newest, biggest one. And I actually agree with people. It's the what comes after people that I think like even people operations and we you know we run a community called a big operation. Society still falls a bit short because it's not it's not.
Tyson
Operation.
Alexa
Operations. In fact, we're trying to strip the operational category out of this function. But get admin out of H.R. people. Optimization just doesn't roll off the tone. It's a bit it's tough. It's like, this is why we still have a podcast a year and a half later is like that. The debate is still ongoing. You know, I'd be curious to hear what you think, Matt, and I'd be curious to hear what you think.
Alexa
Just sort of if we were to pull back for a second, like and just take H.R. out of it, like how do you what makes a good brand and how do you build a good brand? Because you've got.
Matt
Right and it you know, you're right. I care a lot about it. I'm not been successful and always making the companies I work for have great brands I think it's I think like H.R., like marketing team only has control over certain things. And it's sort of a team effort as well. You sort of have to have you know, it's it takes a village for for branding as well.
Matt
But what makes a good brand? I mean, I always think back at like everyone always talks about Apple and it's so cliche, but I always I always think back at the old Apple ads that may pre-date the two of you because I'm old. Well, I mean, you were probably a.
Alexa
George Orwell one.
Matt
Well, not that one, but the one where it's the nerdy guy who represents Apple and the cool guy that represents Apple. But he still does. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Justin Long, I think. Yes.
Alexa
Yes.
Matt
And then it's this other guy who is super nerdy, who almost looks like Bill Gates, who represents PC Microsoft. Yeah. And that to me just sums up like what you want to be you want to be the cool thing and not the nerdy thing. In the more you can position yourself as the cool thing and not the nerdy thing, the better.
Matt
As it turned out, it's really funny. But as it turned out, I went to a high school reunion of mine, and the nerdy guy in that commercial was in my class, and I never realized it just just again, to age myself. The Microsoft guy, the Microsoft guy, I'm like, Of course I went to school with the Microsoft PC guy.
Matt
But so, you know, it's about I do think, Alexa, you and I are very similar. I don't know if you feel the same way, Tyson, but I do think there's a lot to be said about look and feel like look and feel of your brand is super, super crucial. I think, you know, I hate a bad logo. I hate the bad use of colors I you know, I've had I've had the benefit of working with some amazing creative directors of my life that have taught taught me a lot about like what's a no no, what isn't.
Matt
Actually, you're great. At, like, finding good creative people and knowing what to tell them, what to do and so forth. So I think visual has a lot to do with it with me. But then it's like how you express yourself to the world. I think what's really hard to do, which is critical, is aligning as a company on what your tone is, what your voice is I like you, Alexa, and I assume like you, Tyson.
Matt
Like I like to be kind of casual and real. Sometimes that's not okay with a company, depending on what you're selling or services you're providing. It's like, can you tone it down a little bit? Like you're making too many jokes about, you know, you're selling a life saving drug don't make jokes about, you know, or whatever, whatever it might be.
Matt
So so that's a very long answer as to, like, brand. To me, it's like it's visual, but it's much more of a feeling. And you just it's a feeling of like, I just, I just want to work with that company, Patagonia, probably it probably my favorite brand in the world because you're just like, I just want to do I just want to buy stuff from them.
Alexa
So that's fascinating that you use them as an example because where I want to go with this is like, how does that permeate into the employer brand, which I will argue till my eyes turn blue, my eyes are brown. If you can't see me, like it gets just completely neglected and is always, almost always, I would say nine times out of ten, very disconnected from the external brand.
Alexa
Oh, yes. And Patagonia is probably the one example I can think of. Maybe if you others, maybe Amazon, maybe Apple, maybe just depending on their employer brands where that brand seems to also permeate the internal culture. And I would venture to guess that is visible on a lot of touchpoints. So the way that they communicate to their employees is, you know, branded, etc. So I'd be curious to think like how does your how does your brand permeate into your employee experience and if you have thoughts about that.
Matt
Yeah, I mean, I think that's been one of my biggest challenges with H.R. people in The Pet. Well, I've had a lot of challenges with they just.
Alexa
Want to hear all.
Matt
But look at me, I'm a I'm a travel, I'm a problem child. I was the guy growing up who got good grades but horrible attitude grades a lot of the time. But that's why I've been marketing. But yeah, I think it's hard to have the brand permeate into into the internal employee base. I think it's hard for people when H.R. people try to do it themselves.
Matt
Some of them are amazing at it and some of them aren't. But either way it's not likely to be aligned with what the marketing team would want. So, you know, you.
Alexa
Should think they should conspire.
Matt
Yes, I think they have to I think they have to. I think well, I mean, again, I'm the marketing person, so I think marketing should control all communications of everything that's so I have a very extreme view on things. But, but no, but I think marketing should provide a visual and a messaging sort of framework. For H.R. people and that a good H.R. team will go to their marketing team and say, We want to do all these things.
Matt
We know your team is strapped. We don't want your team to do these things, but you have to what? You know, give us the imagery we can use, give us the messaging we can use, give us the colors we can use, etc., etc. What drives me insane again is like any team going off and saying, Well, we didn't like our PowerPoint templates, so we created a new one, or we didn't like that page of the website.
Matt
So the page that's all about careers. We've completely made it look like it's a whole different brand and it may even be better, but it doesn't look like the rest of it. So yeah.
Tyson
You know what's funny is we as H.R. are actually getting forced to partner more so with like comms and marketing and stuff like that. I adore because of like negative things that are happening external to companies, right? So for example, like if started with Glassdoor, all of a sudden everybody was like, ooh, people are saying real people are saying stuff about our companies.
Tyson
And then that escalated to the new hot and cool app, which is blind. It's not new, but it's, it's pretty hot. And so now it's becoming like, look, if we don't communicate with the marketing team and like comms and stuff like that, like some really bad stuff is getting out about us and like we need to like be really in touch with like what's being said externally on these like apps and stuff like that in order for us to be able to then like rejig the way that we're communicating internally to like touch on these things that are happening outside.
Tyson
So like it's almost like we are reacting now to something that happened in the market and now we're like saying like, oh wait, yeah, like maybe we should talk to our comms people. So I'm seeing a lot more like roles in like H.R. comms, like specifically are popping up a lot more because like we, we almost had to like be forced into it.
Alexa
Yeah. I honestly think H.R. marketing or excuse me, employee marketing should like be a role. Like, I think, I don't think well-equipped H.R. teams can have a properly staffed roster without having some of these skills that are really related to marketing on the team. Like you've got to have it on your bench. It's something I will like. I'll argue until the cows come home is like you should have people with marketing skills on your H.R. team, and that could be, you know, how that gets structured in a larger organization may be very different if you're small, but if you can't effectively communicate.
Alexa
So for example, one of my businesses did a survey a few years ago where we surveyed like it was like 200 middle market companies, right? So companies are like 100 employees to like maybe 5000 employees and 80%. This is like three years ago. This is like not that long before COVID 80% of the people that we surveyed said that they have no ability to track an email that an employee is sent about anything related to their employee experience coming from HRT.
Alexa
So that could be benefits, that could be events, that could be onboarding. They can be like they have zero visibility. So people are still using tools and sending emails through old systems and in these ways saying like, oh, well, I don't know, we sent it to 1500 employees and nobody attended the mental health lecture. I can't figure out why.
Alexa
And it's like, well, you don't even know if everybody got it. Which like in the world of, you know, marketing and all these other things, today is just That's asinine. Like, that doesn't mean like what? What do you mean? Like, I can tell you. I can tell you where they hovered on the email as a, as a, as a consumer.
Alexa
But then all of a sudden the behavior is very different when we're talking about our own team and we spend all this time as you know, brand builders and company builders saying like, oh, it's so important to us that like these this is communicated well. And the you know, the tone is good and, you know, it looks good.
Alexa
And it feels sexy and people know exactly what they need to know. And then we turn around and communicate to our employees like ass through some like fucking Workday portal or like some shit nobody reads or the team, God forbid. I love you all for trying, but like tries to make their own monthly newsletter. Like, nobody reads that shit.
Alexa
Because it looks terrible. It doesn't follow the principles. Like, these are skills that are really important because you're in charge of communicating to large hordes of people like. And the more effectively you can do that, the more effective your people organization and people function will be, right? The day is like.
Tyson
But very quickly, to play devil's advocate to that, like I I'm sorry, I don't have time to remind people to sign up for their benefits when it's not your role in your role Right. Like if we send a mass email to people telling them that you have like a deadline to submit something like your benefits selections, like you have to do it.
Tyson
Don't you figure that out? If you didn't read the email, if you didn't read the email, then like sucks to suck in my opinion. Well, just to be.
Alexa
Clear for a hot second, if you were signing up for anything else in your life that was not an employee benefit, you would get, and I'm sure Matt will agree with me here, you would get a personalized email that's like, Hey, Alexa with pretty branding, that's like, you know, you're sick.
Tyson
Keep me from doing something else.
Alexa
Like, I don't know, you have to renew your butcher box you know, subscription or something. Like you get these pretty emails that are like, Hey, Alexa, like, you utilize this much this month and you need to make sure to click here to renew. And here's some other products we'd suggest and some other things you might because it's all whether or not it's actually tailored to me, it doesn't fucking matter.
Alexa
It feels personal. And so I have a very different reaction to it than, Oh, I've just gotten like another fucking mass email, half of which. And the other issue, Tyson, to your point, is like you don't have time and a lot of people don't have time. So when you send out these blast emails, it's like the, the, the H.R. team that cried wolf, right?
Alexa
Like all of a sudden everyone's just ignoring those fucking communications because they're not personalized and half the time they're not relevant to you.
Tyson
Yeah. So maybe Matt, like, tell us like, okay, if it's using this as an example, like, how do we get people to pay attention.
Matt
I'm going to warn you guys right now, there's very loud truck noise outside my window, but I can't hear them. But I'll. That's good. That's good. All right, cool. Well, my number one complaint with anyone in any department of any company is poor communication in general. Just like so like, I'm just going to make a blanket statement. I have I have seen I've seen like the personalization thing I'll get to in a second.
Matt
But long long emails are not like are not going to be read, right? No. And even if it's about my my benefits. Right. And so what always happens is like, well, we sent out an e-mail about that last quarter and in paragraph five, it said that this is where you could find your W-2s. And so how did you not know that your W-2s were there?
Matt
So that kind of thing will drive anyone crazy. And every department does this and every. I'm amazed in general how the business world, how bad people are at written communications. I'm amazed. I don't I don't consider myself great at it. But like I'm better than than a lot of people. And I shouldn't be it should be very easy to know.
Matt
Like, I mean, I'm very verbose when I'm talking, but I try to be super brief in communication. So I'm, you know, an email. Back to your point. An email should be personalized and short and hopefully like, you know, I agree with you, Tyson, too, though, it's not your job to hold the hand of every single employee. Know, if you've set up a system that's super easy to navigate, especially if the system isn't easy to navigate, then that's another thing if you have five different software systems that house all of your H.R. stuff, you know, if you thought, well, well, here's where here's where your benefit information is but here's where you do your one on ones
Matt
with your with your you know, I can say, you know, there's.
Alexa
This 10 seconds that you should show.
Matt
There's a pay system separately there's a there's a one on one system separately. There's a health system. And separately, there's a what time off you have a system, let alone like what are the what are the fun benefits we have, right? Like, what can we do, you know? Right. Alexa?
Alexa
Yeah. Don't even get me started.
Matt
Right away again. You get you're going to get very long answers for me. But that to me, that's the biggest mistake that any department makes. And I love I love my current H.R. department. But that's one thing that they do too much of is these long emails. And then I ping them and say, hey, where do we find this again?
Matt
And they say it was in the email we sent yesterday. You know.
Tyson
I like action. Required, like right at the top.
Matt
I totally like total totaled.
Alexa
But I see, you know, so much now, I have no effect on me.
Tyson
Like, you got to just read your emails. We can't hold to do time.
Alexa
So, okay, so this is another important thing. It's not as an H.R., your job to make sure that everybody knows about their benefits, open enrollment. It is the fucking benefits team's job. And if they don't have any one as a resource on the team or as a liaison to the team that can actually help with communication and engagement, they're fucked so you're basically setting them up for failure.
Alexa
You're like, Hey, we pay $40,000 a year for your benefits. And but we've given the team in charge of making sure you optimize those zero resources to communicate and engage with you effectively like you're fucked. Right? And then, and then the brand of H.R. gets bastardized because it's like, Oh, what? Nobody told me about my benefits. My team sucks.
Alexa
Like, it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what? Your HRT, your badge, BP and your benefits team are separate functions. You should probably know that. But also, like, you've got a resource, your H.R. team, to be able to do this stuff well. And I just find it baffling that you'd spend millions of dollars on a budget for marketing to make sure your consumers know and love you.
Alexa
And then not turn around and spend anything on making sure your employees get a similar experience after you've already done all the work. Right. Like, man, how much team, how much time do you guys spend thinking about what's going to engage consumers and what's going to bring in leads and what messaging people are going to respond to? You already have the skill as a business.
Alexa
You just have to like lend it to your people team sometimes.
Matt
Yeah, I think I think where I'll defend the H.R. group is they don't get resources a lot of the time, right? They're their cost center marketing is a cost center, too. But, but H.R., it's sort of like, Hey, we really want some better software to do X, Y, Z, or some better ways to you know, we need a whole band like most, most of the companies I work for don't have a separate benefits department because it's so small, right?
Matt
So it's one H.R. group with like six people trying to do everything and they're not tracking the emails. They they they should. Some of them are, some of them aren't, you know, and they're not doing the best thing. So I do feel for H.R. teams, I think where it gets you know, I think I think the worst thing is to is to not be in touch with what people are thinking.
Matt
So so to not understand like, hey, you're now talking, you're presenting something to us and in your way off base, you know what I mean? Like and that again applies to any group like a CEO or anything. But when an H.R. person, you know, presents communication like, hey, happy fall, everyone.
Tyson
And because it isn't.
Matt
Everything perfect and like, they don't know that, you know, right now everyone's really pissed off about X-Y-Z or they're.
Alexa
Saying like, last or something.
Matt
Yeah, yeah. Or check out this amazing new portal. We have everyone. And they didn't, you know, take the time to get the feedback from people. And everyone is saying, you know, this thing sucks. That that kind of thing. I think is, is tone.
Tyson
Deaf. H.R. Department.
Matt
Oh, my gosh.
Alexa
Yeah, yeah. I can't. I can't listen to one more company tell me they introduce a micro site or an Internet, and it fell flat I'm like, just, oh, it hurts. Anyway, that brings up a point that we skipped over, though. That's important, which is this concept of personalization. So, for example, are not it's not just email subjects, right?
Alexa
It's not just like personalizing the messaging that you get in marketing for 20 plus years at least. I would assume that this concept of personas and individually marketing to people based on things that you know about them to be true is a well-known concept, right? So like Tyson gets different ads than me because we know different things about Tyson than we know about me and says, you know, millennial females are going to get different information and different targeted ads than you, who is a I'm going to assume a Gen X male, right?
Alexa
Or borderline custom millennial. You know, you're going to get different stuff. Like we're all getting different ads.
Matt
I'm not a baby. I'm not a baby boomer.
Alexa
I almost called you a boomer. And I was like, you know, slap me if I step out. You look great for your age, whatever it is. So the point is, like, that's a known concept, right? Is like we have personas of people that we largely understand have certain behaviors because we have all this data and H.R. and people data is very much on the rise.
Alexa
And I'm a big proponent of that. But like, you shouldn't be sending the same email unless it's like an action required building close tomorrow. You shouldn't be sending the same information necessarily to everyone. It's not for everyone. Right. But then.
Tyson
It falls on the.
Alexa
Table.
Tyson
But give me an example of a situation where you would want to send a certain type of email to some employee, but not in other benefits.
Alexa
As a perfect example, benefits is a perfect example. So for example, I would send you information based on what I might know about your benefits package, that there's something new about the fertility benefit, and there's an update to the HMO because I know you're on the HMO plan right but I wouldn't send that to Matt because Matt's not interested in fertility benefits, and that's not on the HMO.
Alexa
He's on the PPO. So I would send him different information. Again, access to the same information is very important, but sending and pushing the information should not always be identical. So you should both have access to the exact same information about what is available to you. But actually marketing that information to you should be based more on your preferences than it currently is.
Alexa
It's the reason why everyone ignores the fucking emails because they're like, Oh, it's just for everybody. It's not for me. So one of the ways you can engagement is by making it for you personally.
Tyson
Hold on, hold on. This is becoming very benefits.
Alexa
Yeah, yeah. And I don't I will make it.
Tyson
That way, but and I will marketing. I will say that there are apps that people use that companies purchase to help with, like their benefits and stuff. And those apps do that. So for example, like when I register for my benefits, like I don't register through my company and I don't register through the insurance provider, but there's a middleman that you go to.
Tyson
And then through that you have like a dashboard. You can go to the website, you can look at your benefits. They give you like all the little things. So that's something that like we would like purchase from a third party perspective versus like something that would be done in-house if.
Alexa
You don't know. So let's let's pull this away from like benefits apps. I don't want to talk about benefits. Yeah. What I think is more important here and the reason that Matt is, is sort of the resident expert is when you're talking about the employer brand, you are talking about everything that the company is doing that it is trying to promote on behalf of the employer right.
Alexa
So there are examples of what, you know, think of what's what makes up your employee experience, right? Your events, your benefits, your company wide cultural practices, your lifestyle with the office. Matt, what am I missing? They're all things that can be communicated differently to different groups or at least be specialized depending on certain groups. It doesn't have to be ignored.
Alexa
Right. But you might change the messaging based on, hey, come to the family barbecue or come to the all hands meeting or whatever.
Tyson
Like there's there's telling you right now, you only invited people with kids to the family barbecue and you did you, for example, and you didn't invite other people. The uproar.
Alexa
No, no, I sound proposing. Yeah, of course. But that's not what I'm proposing. But you could imagine a world where the people who don't have kids get an email that's like, hey, come meet, you know, come meet your other coworkers. It's a very like, you know, stag friendly environment. And the people who have families, it's like, hey, there will be child care hey, your kids will be well taken care of.
Alexa
Like you could you could adjust that messaging to make it more optimized for each individual party versus being like, oh, your inviting a single chick with no kids to the family event again, like it's just going to be donkey rides.
Matt
And I think you actually you bring up a really good point. I, I don't know enough about how much this is done or not done at larger companies because again, I've been mostly smaller in size companies. But when you're marketing that the enemy of engagement is to send a lot of stuff that's like peanut butter, like spread across a big group of people, it might be kind of interesting to all of them.
Matt
And so the more you can send things that are specific about you, the better I you know, like you said, like if if you happen to know that there's like this great new fertility benefit and again, I know we want to get away from it, but again, like, if I got that and that was the only thing that email was about, maybe, maybe it would be important to me if I had a spouse and so forth.
Alexa
Just think about development, right? Like you're a first time manager versus a romantic time manager or, you know, there's all kinds of ways you could slice this cat, but.
Matt
Right. Yeah, but I guess I have not seen a lot of that. I think that makes a lot of sense is that there's got to be a much better way to internally market everything. Like you said, all the it's not just so it's.
Tyson
Usually how I see that like at a bigger, bigger company is through like workspaces that are created using tools like Slack, for example, or like Workplace Biomet. So like there would be various interest groups. Let's say that people opt in to themselves. So I might say I am part of, you know, parent company X and I would join Z group on Slack or whatever that is, and there would be tons of information and it might be an area where like we could target things like, hey, parents, like did you hear like we're now offering flexible work weeks if you have child care issues because of the pandemic.
Tyson
Like a lot of that happen through interest groups that people sort of self-select in versus any sort of like mass comms via email. So.
Alexa
So selecting in is easier though. So that's like that's great because you have it ready basically subpopulation that's like opting in for that information. And if we could just if H.R. could just get better at getting people to opt into their own interests, that would probably be a huge fucking win for everybody. But the reality is like you still have to optimize the larger communications where people do not engage.
Alexa
And it seems to be like, oh, we'll focus on ERGs and then we'll just send like shitty blast emails and there's like nothing in between. And again, what frustrates me about it is not that it's hard or rocket science, it's that like the marketing teams already doing all this work so many of these tools already exist in your own organization.
Alexa
Yeah, there are experts on your team on the payroll already that do this it just do it for a slightly different group, which is your consumer.
Matt
That is true. And and I don't know how enticing you would know this much better than I would, but how good H.R. databases are at at in the same way that we have Salesforce having all of our customer information so we know this person is interested in X, Y, Z, but not ABC. If if that's sort of built out of engagements the the employee has with, with, you know, company communications to the Lexus, why it sounds like not a lot like if it's like, hey, every time we send this out, the whole engineering team doesn't open it, you know, but but the whole sales team does.
Matt
So, hey, we got to figure out something and bring them in. I don't know. I think.
Alexa
Bad Tech is probably the biggest blind spot here, which is like H.R. systems are just built to be like name email, better selection.
Matt
Yeah.
Alexa
Yeah, yeah. They're they're very rudimentary.
Tyson
Systems and they just don't work together. Like, that would be like, my dream is that like either there's one or that they all work together. Oftentimes they're very piecemeal and like, they don't inform one another. So you're kind of like you said at the beginning, like doing like things and everything.
Alexa
Or you've got to be a huge organization to like pay for the infrastructure to build into the API to implement.
Tyson
Yeah. And I worked.
Alexa
As which is a multi, multi million dollar projects like.
Tyson
Totally just don't have that I've always worked for large organizations and I've never seen it.
Alexa
So yeah, it's hard. It's hard, yeah. It's also, I think people are coming to it after the fact. Go ahead. I'm sorry.
Matt
What are you guys I'm probably I'm not supposed to be asking questions. So what are you guys, what are you guys seeing in terms of of culture efforts nowadays? Because I one of my frustrations and again, this is turning to me just bitching about H.R., but one of my frustrations is always we have a great culture. You know, we do a happy hour once a month and now it's a virtual happy hour because of XYZ.
Matt
And and that's what a great culture we have.
Alexa
No one is doing pizza parties. Can we start with that joke like that? No one is doing pizza parties. Because, like, instead of a raise, like, that's not a thing like and if someone buys a piece of shit, I mean, the fucking pizza.
Matt
I know. Yeah, yeah. But I.
Alexa
Can always make.
Tyson
What I.
Matt
Mean. I mean, Aleksei you and I know from from our shared experience, that culture does not necessarily emanate from whether or not you have cool activities at your organization. It's about trust and communication and all those other things. When you're talking to other guests. And I haven't listened to every single podcast, so I don't know this, but. But what are.
Alexa
We going to leave now.
Matt
Matt? Well, yeah. What can you tell me? I'm doing a lot of smart lists. Listen to a lot of smart list, but I do listen to you guys too. What, what what are people talking about in terms of cultural efforts, initiatives? I know you said eggs. That could be one of them, but like what are the things that are sort of the hot things now for for those.
Tyson
I feel like I should just we should just sort of like acknowledge what you said there is that it's not about the activities right? It's not about like I just made the joke pizza party. It's not about the happy hour. It's not a bit like the activities. It's about all those other things that you just listed. Trust, you know, talking to people about their careers, making sure people are paid fairly, etc., etc. And that's why I feel so strongly that it should not be a responsibility solely to be the keepers of culture, because for example, like it's very hard for us to sort of make sure that leaders are trustworthy.
Tyson
Like, obviously we can coach leaders and coach people and how to have like really good conversations and stuff like that to to help with building trust and like, you know, give some tips along the way. But it's really difficult. But I think the hot thing needs to be that we work on some of those very basic things, like how do we ensure the people trust the company that they work for?
Tyson
And that's like what I would like to see is that happening new. But like that's what I would like to see as the whole thing for sure.
Alexa
To two things I would say I, I agree with that. What I would say is, you know, again, pizza party like the pizza party just pisses me off because like no one is saying that the pizza party is a replacement for your bonus and no one is trying to say that like they're just buying your fucking pizza to try to do something because all they can afford, however, like taking about $200 for the pizza and spreading it around two to 100 employees is not going to get everyone, anyone to raise pennywise and dollar foolish.
Alexa
Anyway, the point is a lot of this culture conversation comes at the point where and Matt, you and I have seen this firsthand is it comes at the point where long story short, guys, we work for a company that the culture eroded very quickly and was largely just due to people not trusting leadership and and just a lot of I think peacocking about what did culture quote unquote looks like on the surface but not actually having a lot of the foundational stuff in place.
Alexa
So I think when you talk about perks and benefits and experiences and events and like all these sort of topical things it's like putting shutters on a house that doesn't have drywall yet. Like you can't. Those things don't matter if the foundation and the scaffolding underneath aren't already there. And the problem is that especially with H.R. and I feel for our profession so much on this, they get thrown all this like fad bullshit all the time, like, oh, the latest, hottest, most competitive thing is you know, dog transportation services.
Alexa
And it's like, that might be true, but you don't have to jump on that. And while I realize it, it's easier to sign up for a you know, $5,000 a year service that you can offer to all of your employees than it is to go tell your CEO is a fucking dickhead. You really have to, as a profession, focus on the foundation first, right?
Alexa
So that's like an obvious thing, but too often it's like very easy to be like, Oh, well, this is quick and easy and cheap and it's, you know, people will see it immediately in their benefits package. And it's like, that's true. But they're not going to stay for the Netflix subscription if you fuck up the cost structure. Right.
Alexa
So the second thing I would say is in terms of what's happening right now is I think because we're in this labor shift, like we're going from the last two and a half years of everyone being like, I'm I'm an employee, I'm going to hop jobs, I'm in, I'm in control. The labor market loves me well into what is let's just call it the recession at this point or the, you know, the impending recession, whatever the fuck we want to call it.
Alexa
I'm pretty sure it's here, but it's fine. People are I think they're backing away from this conversation in general. I think they are still looking for quick wins on the topical stuff because H.R. people are always looking for just ways to quickly take care of their team. And I applaud them for that. I think it's an amazing core tenet of the profession.
Alexa
However, I don't see people asking about virtual happy hours or how to fix them or how to get people back into the. I think people are just like what's also not forced the issue. Like there's also been a lot of change in as I guess about people just being like, you know, and you've we've seen what we've done is in the news recently, Tyson, like people suing for like not going getting sued for not going to the company happy hour excuse me getting the French guy fired for not going to the company happy hours that he sued the company any one right.
Alexa
So I was like I'm not forcing this shit insane. I love that guy. That guy's my hero. But also like, don't force it. Like anyone who's ever worked with a team or, you know, done any of these kind of like managerial style roles knows you also can't force this shit like and I think people are sort of collectively stopping their business.
Alexa
No one's forcing anywhere. One, the budgets are cleaning up, I think, but to like people are just like we they're coming back to the office. So we're not we're hiring or we're not and like, you don't want to hang out. Cool. I just yeah.
Tyson
I think also, like, I want if I'm going to have a happy hour like I want be catching up with the girlfriend, you know, like, I don't have a lot of time. I have a baby. I have a lot going on. If I'm going to be taking an hour out of my day to have drinks, it's going to be with an old friend who I haven't seen for a while.
Tyson
The time I want with my team is time talking, talking about work, time talking about, you know, if it's with my boss, I don't want to be out getting cocktails I want to be talking about my career. I want to be talking about like what we're going to achieve, how well I'm doing, that sort of thing. So, like, I think we've misinterpreted, like, what people want in the workplace like, I think if people naturally want to connect socially because they're friendly or whatever, like, we let them do that, but like we can like take a step out.
Tyson
The other thing is I.
Alexa
Think it's important every once in a while I encourage that for sure.
Tyson
And we talked about at holiday parties and like what that would go back and listen to our episode on the holiday parties and, you know, use that when you're thinking about planning parties, but also just like there really needs to be a deep connection to what people do and what the company does overall and all that stuff with which I'm sure Matt like it's music to your ears.
Tyson
It's just that like we need to be connected to mission and, you know, goals company wide. So like if companies are doing a good job of marketing that both externally and internally, like what the hell do we do here? And why are we doing something important? I think that's really important too.
Matt
Yeah. And when I look back at companies that I work for that had good cultures versus ones that didn't have bad cultures, it's obviously a sliding scale, but some of it was was encouraged by H.R. or the executive team or whatever, and some of it was just organic. Like you said, Tyson, some of it was like the people that worked there just jelled.
Matt
Like, for example, when Alexa and I were together, the two of us and these two other executives could be found there was one night where we stumbled into a club in Boston, and we all had our branded back yellow backpacks on our back, and we were dancing at a dance club with backpacks on looking like total idiot nerd squad, totally out of place.
Matt
Everyone there was like 19. But that's that was that I think of that as globe.
Alexa
I forget where that was thinking.
Matt
It might have.
Alexa
Good life, a good life.
Matt
But, but that's the sign of it. That's a sign of a, a like a piece of a good culture of like connecting with other employees. And like, I worked for this other company called Jump Tab where we were, we rebranded because I didn't like our brand and we rebranded to this sort of very blue. We were very blue.
Matt
And everything we did, we got acquired by this company that was, that had all green stuff. And they came in they started sweep and cleaning house of all the all the blue. And I remember we had this sort of big, like, happy hour thing where like a bunch of people started saying, I still bleed blue. And I'm like, man, that's like, that's like, great.
Matt
Like, like, that's a success. Not, not for marketing but for the jump to have company that people think of that company as, like, that was my soul, like that blue. And so that's what I think of as, like, internal culture is like have people be like, yeah, I'm a part of it, you know? It'll always be a part of me.
Matt
It's hard. It's hard to achieve. There's no like, there's no formula for it.
Tyson
I heard hilarious stories about acquisitions where where they go in literally overnight and they get rid of all the old branded stuff and put in all the new branded stuff and people come to work the next day.
Alexa
I kind of don't hate that. So I realize it's probably a little jarring and.
Tyson
Mugs are gone. I consume guys that I.
Alexa
Kind of don't hate that tactic, but like just rip the fucking Band-Aid off.
Matt
But I could totally see you doing that. Alexa, you're like that. They're adults. They can handle it. This is like they got to know that this is the new world. Like, it's time to grow up.
Alexa
Kids. Yeah, exactly. Green all the way, baby. Yeah, yeah.
Matt
But create green or hit the street, basically.
Alexa
Good. Exactly. Screen or bust? Yeah, exactly. You believe my colors are. You're out. That's no awesome, I think. Yeah, that's really funny. It's also, like, quite covert to pull off, right? Yeah. Yeah. All right, man. Well, any other just like, you know, I know we've talked about this ad nauseum together and dancing it good life or otherwise. Like any other things you want the world to know about, just, like, doing this stuff.
Alexa
Well.
Matt
Yeah. I mean, again, I, you know, it's it's sort of tactical and what I said at the beginning, but I do think if you build a good relationship with the marketing team, which, you know, H.R. does have a lot of leverage. Like, everyone needs to be on their side. So good. H.R. people have come have like, worked with me, and maybe they were just good at bullshitting me, but they've worked with me to make me think they like me and they will help me and then they help me find my benefits information when I couldn't when I couldn't find I didn't have a long email.
Matt
They do all that because they know. Then at the end of the day, they're going to be like, Hey, we want to do this whole campaign. To internal employees or for recruiting purposes, and we need to borrow your designers or we need some messaging help, or we need a page on the website. If they haven't built that capital up ahead of time, I'm going to be kind of like, fuck off, you know, a little bit.
Matt
And but if they have, then I'm like, Yeah, I know you. You've been great to me. My team will be great to use. So I think it's very obvious, but just, you know, keep, keep your build relationships.
Alexa
Your friends close in your marketing team.
Matt
Because it gets close and your marketing people closer. Yeah, that's good.
Alexa
I love that. Cool. All right, Tyson, any closing thoughts.
Tyson
Um, no, I don't think so. I think, like, look has got a long way to go. And I think that, like, it's it's going to be so important. I think to start with, like, understanding, like, and we didn't even get into this, but, like, we need to know, like, what the hell were you been doing to be able to, like, build out?
Tyson
Like what? That, what that brand looks like both externally to the world and internally to companies. And I think that we have a lot of work to do on that and a lot of soul searching from our perspective.
Alexa
Yeah, I, I think we can all agree on that.
Matt
Well, when you guys come up with a new term for our I'll be super excited and I.
Tyson
Can you make the logo.
Matt
That's what I was going to say. Like, like, I think, you know, I think that's part of it. I think that's a big part of it. The logo, the visuals are all part of the role.
Alexa
I would just encourage as I think it's my closing thought, I would encourage you to think as like for just do the thought experiment of being more visual about the brand of air. Like take a half fucking second and look at the shit that you are putting into the world at your organization and just be like, treat it like an Instagram feed and just be judgy as shit.
Alexa
Like if you can be a bit of a brand snot about how you communicate as an H.R. team and how you put yourself out to the organization as a team is stupid. Little stuff like the logos you use, your email signatures like that shit makes a difference. And I would encourage and H.R. never gets the, the, the, the free rein to say, Hey, go think about being pretty for a minute.
Alexa
Go think about being cool for a minute. Go think about it using your imagination with color or color for a minute.
Tyson
Like we got way too much instead of you, I'm going to be on.
Alexa
So I know it's just a it's just a quick thought experiment, you know, too.
Tyson
Busy helping people figure out their benefits.
Alexa
Just read the fucking benefit comes. Jesus Christ don't suck. But that's step one. They have to not suck. All right, that's a wrap. Oh, all right, guys, that was fun.